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Sometimes Reality Doesn't Cooperate with Our Need for a Theme

 




Reading through the morning-after coverage of the big primary night from two weeks ago (North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Oregon) I was looking for some guidance on where we are headed in this mid-term year, and I was struck by the elusiveness of social reality.

Our own inner reality, our human nature, dictates that we look for a central theme in the outer reality, specifically in a range of elections across the country. We want a single frame for the night. Lots of important stuff was going on, it seemed all to have SOMETHING to tell us about where all the midterm election jockeying stands, but it refused to gel. 

Reporters and pundits seemed to have wanted to write either "Trump still has a firm grip on the GOP" or maybe "Trump no longer has a firm grip on the GOP." Instead, they had to acknowledge that he didn't get his way in Idaho or a southwestern corner of North Carolina, but that he had gotten his way in a statewide party primary in NC and in another congressional district there. He also MIGHT have gotten his way in Pennsylvania too, although that was still uncertain at the time of the Wednesday morning stories, and is probably STILL uncertain even as you read this. 

With regard to the one most high-profile race, one that reminded people of Oprah no less, the facts refused to gel. There were three main characters at the end: one Trump had specifically warned against, apparently because she is too pure a Trumpet to win over swing votes, and another Trump had specifically endorsed, apparently because he is a television-born celebrity too. If Mehmet Oz had only won easily, and the warned-against candidate had fallen away to a clear distant third, the "Trump still has it!" headlines would have written themselves, notwithstanding Cawthorn. 

And the purist Trumpet did fall into a median-distance third, cooperating with this frame. But the 'other guy' in this troika, David McCormick, gummed up the works. 

Reality, eh? what a bummer. 

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  1. Paul D. Van PeltJune 1, 2022 at 7:46 AM

    Reality, in such circumstances, is overridden by context. The national dialog changed dramatically with the advent of the Trump years. For some, lying became part of a newer skill set. Circumstances shift as contingencies surface. Many establishmentarians vastly underestimated the duration of the phenomenon. Fewer now, continue to do so. In one humble opinion, postmodernism set the stage for the demise of democracy. Contextual reality was already raising its head...

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